A Welcome Distaction
by madasarabbit
Summary: In a large, crowded hall sits Seeley Booth with a short attention span and bored out of his mind. Of course, someone has to come to his rescue soon enough. Rated for very mild language.


Seriously, people, I just needed to write something. I would write something episode-related, but is it just me or have the recent episodes kind of sucked? Let me know what you think of this, I just wrote it un-beta-ed for my own amusement, so don't take it too seriously. As always, feedback is encouraged, appreciated, and obsessed over.

-Meghan

* * *

_The room is vast, grand, an historical. In fact, it was probably more of a hall. Yeah, a hall. A hall with lots of...historical significance. Anyone asks about the room, I say it was actually a huge, historically significant hall. And if they ask about the lecture? _

_Show them the gun._

"And when you cross-reference the database, it's crucial that sll users make note to memorize the..."

_A mandatory lecture? About what, Star Trek? Because that's all I'm getting here. Yadda, yadda, yadda... I'm around Bones and the team enough to grasp a few basic computer terms, but this is just ridiculous. It's why Special Agents have secretaries, for god's sakes. Shared ones, but still..._

"...and if you turn to page sixty-four in the booklet that was handed out in the beginning here, you'll see quite clearly how the new system does all of it's..."

_Where is Bones, anyway? Jeffersonian employees have the same computer crap we deal with too..._

"Pay close attention to the new passwords for each county's department. While your respective accounts _will _grant you clearance to any and all cases you need to be in on, it's still good to..."

_What's going on with this woman's haircut? I know she has to do __this for a living, but you still think she'd make an effort to crawl out of the eighties. Most of the time when you tell someone your name is Heather, it shouldn't bring their thoughts to Shannen Doherty in shoulder pads. And for that matter-_

It was almost imperceptible to someone who was actually paying attention to the speaker, but the atmosphere made a sudden change. The room got brighter, the background noise's levels rose. Booth glanced to the sides of the room, where those irritating IT guys waiting their turn were muttering among themselves.

_Wait, the room didn't get brighter. The door just opened. But who are all of those people?_

At this point, the rest of the somewhat narcoleptic agents pretending to pay attention and take notes had turned in their seats, desperate for an actual distraction. A small swarm of men and women holding boom mikes and throwing questions at someone trapped in their cluster had materialized, turning the "huge, historically significant hall" into litle more than an echo chamber.

"Excuse me!" cried the irritating little eighties woman from the front of the room, "Excuse me!" but to no avail. A pair of guards from each side of the doorway had begun an attempt in intervening. Booth craned for a better glimpse of the mystery media magnet.

_Mystery media magnet. Alliteration. Nice._

But then- "Bones!"

It was her, all right. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Irritated expression. "A little help, please!" she called.

Six lightning-fast strides across the room, and three of the reporters found themselves face-to-face with the carpet. One of them was even twitching a little.

"Bones, are you okay?"

"That was completely unnecessary, Booth. I think you might have really hurt that one!"

He snorted, and offered the grounded reporter a hand. "What's going on?"

"Nothing, really." She batted her hand in an it's-nothing gesture, knocking a tape recorder into a nearby wall. "Just another case. I don't know why the FBI finds it so amusing to put my name into their public reports, though. This has been getting worse and worse."

"Well-" Booth grunted, trying to push two journalists towards the door, "We...Need to...Get public approval." Two down, four to go. They were completely oblivious to the fact that a couple of their colleagues had just been manhandled out of the room, it seemed.

"Bullshit," She was watching on in amusement as he continued to eliminate each little annoyance from her presence as if it were no big deal. The guards were doing the same.

"It's true. But wait..." A grunt. "A case? Why didn't you- Move it, douchebag!- call me?" Finally, all of the leeches were gone. They relaxed and turned to look up at the stage, where Heather was still yammering into her microphone.

"EXCUSE ME! Agent Booth, Doctor Brennan, please take this outside. We are trying to learn here!"

"Who is she?" asked Brennan, cocking her head to one ide.

"Not sure," he muttered. "One of the programming people. Heather Something."

She laughed. "Heather? As in..."

"Yeah, I know."

"But...look at her outit! Her harstyle! I might not be Miss Continent or anything, but I think that's just inviting a..." she trailed off. Heather-trapped-in-the-eighties-Something was beginning to turn dangerously red. "Oh. Right."

Booth shoved open the door with his foot and dragged her outside. It had been almost three hours since he had had an actual breath of fresh air, and he could have kissed his prartner for the excuse to make a break. "Tell me about this case, Bones. Murder? Mayhem? High speed Wienermobile chase?" He paused, breathing more if that miraculous fresh air. "Oh, I think you were thinking about Miss America, Bones. Or Miss World."

"I don't know what a wienermobile is, so I'l assume that part was a joke. What was that last part?"

"You said Miss Continent inside. Doesn't exist."

"Duly noted. And I'm sorry to disappoint, but no murder. Or mayhem. Or high speed chases for that matter. Someone found so far unidentified remains in a shop by the Ford Theater," she said, rolling her eyes a bit. They headed out to the curb, looking for Booth's new car.

"Not exciting, then?" SHe laughed. He must have picked up the eye roll.

"Well, they beamed over the Jeffersonain some photos, and I think the 'remains' in question may actually be those of a large dog who got stuck in a wall for a few years too long."

"Not exciting."

She grinned. "Well, I wouldn't quite say that."

"Why not? Is it a dog who's comitted a felony?" He unlocked the car and tossed his jacket inside, frowning at the unusually warm DC weather. "Big hold up in PetSmart?"

"Not anything like that. But the place _does _have some of the best ice cream in town, or so Ange tells me."

The car peeled away fro the curb a minute later, lights and sirens flashing and blaring.


End file.
